Conservative, liberal Midwest college students talk politics while practicing empathy : NPR

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This year, college campuses have been at the center for debates over free speech. Students at two small universities in the Midwest are working on a different approach. One school is mostly liberal. The other is mostly conservative. Students meet each month to talk politics, practice listening and also avoiding assumptions about how the other side thinks. Catharine Richert with member station Minnesota Public Radio went to a recent meeting.

CATHARINE RICHERT, BYLINE: Usually, this group talks politics over a meal. But on this night, the meeting is at a Saint Paul bowling alley in the basement of a bar. There are murals and old dollar bills on the wall. As she slips on her bowling shoes, Mena Feleke recalls the moment she realized her liberal college campus was kind of an intellectual bubble.

MENA FELEKE: My freshman year, a good friend of mine actually transferred because he didn’t feel like he was able to express his opinions and be able to disagree with the people on campus.

RICHERT: She’s a senior at Macalester College, a private liberal arts school with about 2,000 students. Most of them are liberal, and so is she. Feleke says there’s not a lot of room for political disagreement as a result, and she wants to be part of changing that culture.

FELEKE: I wanted to be able to be in an environment where I could have difficult conversations and then bring the skills that I learned from this group back to campus.

RICHERT: This night, she’s joined by several other Macalester students and a group from nearby University of Northwestern, which has about 3,200 students. It’s a Christian school where most students are conservative. One of them is Jenny Liang, a senior. She’s really into politics and she wants to make a career out of it. She’s worked on five campaigns in just the last two years. And she says meeting with liberal students has reshaped how she might approach the job.

JENNY LIANG: I feel like a lot of politicians see the world as, like, black and white, while the voters, the majority of the voters see it in, like, shades of gray. So I feel like, by being so polarized, they kind of forget to see the nuances. And that’s what a lot of the voters want.

RICHERT: The group did talk about the presidential election, but their meetings focus more on finding common ground and shared life experiences. Corbin Hoornbeek, president of University of Northwestern, says while his students are politically very different from Macalester’s, these meetings are beneficial.

CORBIN HOORNBEEK: Our students share a lot of the same heart and concern for the world. What if? Is it possible a fairly liberal school and a fairly conservative school could sit down at the table and learn to have constructive and civil conversations together about the world?

RICHERT: Macalester President Suzanne Rivera is also at the bowling event. She says being open to political diversity is a skill that’s important to learn.

SUZANNE RIVERA: I don’t think it’s our job in higher education to promise 100% comfort at all times. I think growing and stretching requires occasionally stepping into spaces that make you uncomfortable.

RICHERT: Macalester junior Freeman Boda says the meetings have changed the way he digests social media. A few months ago, he was reading a newspaper article that mentioned this group. He says the comments were vitriolic. They accused Boda and his fellow students of sanewashing, this idea that making an extreme idea or person seem normal is weak, like a concession.

If you’d seen those comments, like, a year ago before…

FREEMAN BODA: I would’ve agreed, yeah. I would’ve completely – I might’ve been one of those comments. So I think changing someone’s mind starts with having a connection outside of politics, and that’s what I’ve really enjoyed here.

RICHERT: For the next hour, there’s not much talk of politics. The mood is light. The students will eat burgers and fries and cheer each other on whether they score or not.

For NPR News, I’m Catharine Richert in Saint Paul.

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